Beat Furrer’s Aria traverses the line from intimate attachment to complete isolation. Based on a scene from an Austrian radio play, in which a jilted woman cries out bitterly and cuttingly after her lover, the work treats the voice almost as an instrument on par with the rest of the ensemble as the singer struggles to release her song. Only once she is free of her attachment does the singing voice appear.

Also on the program are works by Patricia Alessandrini – one of the most important young voices in European composition today – and Anton Webern – also important, but a little older – and a premiere of Jodie Rottle and Hannah Reardon-Smith’s collaborative lament for our polluted oceans, Garbage Island.